Combat

MMORPG

First and foremost, Dominus is an MMORPG. It centers around the development of your character in a large, rich, story driven universe where each faction struggles for the Prime element. Of the many fun things to do in the game, one of the most important, if not the most important is combat. We want you to feel connected to your character and for combat to be a satisfying experience. Because of this we've spent an enormous amount of time refining it to be smooth and responsive.

Secondly, this is a massively multiplayer online game. We don't pair off small teams and load you into a map with a contrived goal. We envision hundreds, even thousands of players vying for control of key areas. More than anything we want what the players choose to do to matter within the actual world, and the same goes for combat.

Finally, although each faction has six classes each with a particular strength, we want there to be a large variety within the classes themselves. Groups can easily be comprised of players of the same class, since players can choose to max out different skills that make each of them valuable to the group.

This section is just a small intro to the combat system. We're really looking forward to running around with thousands of you in the near future.

Targeting

We designed targeting to be easy and dynamic. You can target an enemy in one of three ways:

Pointing your character - Your character will target an enemy that is directly in front of it until you enter combat. Once you enter combat you will have to manually select another target if you'd like to change.

Your health is displayed on screen as a large green bar. Every class has a base healing ability that can be used to heal yourself or another friendly player. Although each faction has a specialized healing class that has many other healing abilities, giving everyone a basic heal allows a much greater variety in grouping.

Energy

Energy is displayed on screen as a large blue bar and once used it recharges at a constant rate. (There are some objects and abilities that recharge energy.) It does not directly affect combat abilities as firing weapons, and using special abilities does not consume energy. Careful energy management is important since it is used for three things that are used in combat:

Jetpack - Energy is needed to activate a jetpack. There are a variety of jetpacks that consume energy at varying rates.

Personal Shield - Energy is needed to activate your personal shield. There are a variety of shields a player can equip that consume energy at varying rates.

Biofuse - The ability to heal is tied to your individual energy and the amount of energy required diminishes with increased skill in this ability.

No Auto Attack

The player must choose their abilities and activate them during combat. This adds to the skill and strategy of the players themselves. In addition, combat has been designed to be quick and fluid without an auto attack. In fact, the great majority of abilities are "instant", not requiring prep time.

Crowd Control

Crowd control used wisely adds a very strategic element to combat. Crowd control takes the form of stuns, slows, and "mez-es". Each player gets the basic ability to break each of these, and as with all abilities, skill points can be spent to make the ability more powerful.

Death Penalty

Upon death, a player must be re-cloned in order to enter the game. The player loses time and has to respawn in the nearest cloning facility to where they died. (Other possible penalties, and whether or not there will be any, are still under discussion.)

Of greater consequence is the fact that any harvested resources the player was carrying will remain on that player's corpse, and be lootable by the opposing factions.

It is possible for the specialized healing classes to resurrect the fallen, with no rez-sickness.

Grouping

The standard party size is 6 members. 8 parties can band together to form a single raid group of 48 players. There are a few "instanced" PVE areas that require a small group of 6 players, but most of Prime's encounters are open world and therefore it's up to the players themselves to decide how many players should comprise the group.

Melee/Ranged

All classes can equip melee AND ranged weapons. It is up to the player to manually switch their weapons given the situation. (Currently, the CTRL key is the default button for swapping between melee and range.)